Rules of dating a young guy

In my life I have to confess I have a certain fondness for Demi Moore. It dates back to her 1986 film About Last Night. But before that, was Blame It On Rio. Which is kind of surreal in retrospect. That was a film about Michael Caine as the older man, who ends up shacking up with the teenage daughter of his best friend. Moore played Caine's daughter, not his lover, but it's kind of fitting that many moons later, Moore is the one in a relationship with an almost teenager herself, having started dating husband Aston Kutcher when she was 40 and he was 25. That makes her a Cougar. Yup. Capital C.

Women I know tell me that there is a definite time scale that must be followed to be considered a Cougar. The woman needs to be at least 40. The man she dates, or sleeps with, no more than 25. Other friends, less anal about definitions, simply put it as an age difference that exceeds 10 years. The term theoretically comes from the oversized cat of the same name, a predatory animal that pretty much gets what it wants. While Moore and Kutcher are the couple that most often come to mind when thinking Cougars, we've had a long history of them.

European royalty is rife with romances between older women and younger men. Catherine, Empress of Russia, has the sobriquet 'the Great' attached to her name, and while that may have been because of her leadership skills, she managed to find the time while ruling the roost to have an affair with Grigory Potemkin, a man ten years younger. She dumped him to eventually take on Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov, who was 29 years younger, and then Prince Zubov, who was 40 years younger.

Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins

Elizabeth I of England may well have been the Virgin Queen for some, but there were enough suitors who shared a certain proximity, shall we say, to Her Majesty. The last was the Duke of Anjou, who was 26 when the Queen was 48.

The 1967 film, The Graduate, outed Cougars completely when it allowed Ann Bancroft, as the fondly remembered Mrs Robinson, to seduce the young Dustin Hoffman. But Hollywood's had a history of them, both on and off screen. In Sunset Boulevard, made in 1950, Gloria Swanson fell in love with a much younger William Holden, only to shoot him when he spurned her attentions.

Off screen, Mae West, who put the X in sex with her roles as the seductive siren, spent 20 years with former body-builder Chester Rybinski, all the way until her death at 87. She was 67 when she hooked up with him. He was barely in his 30s.

More recently, Kim Catrall, who played a Cougar in Sex and The City, pretty much did the same thing when it came to her personal life. The actress, who was getting familiar with what it felt like to be 50 at the time, was steaming up the kitchen with then Canadian chef Alan Wyse. He was still a twentysomething when they started dating. Catrall once told an interviewer that men her age and older were terrified of her, something she never experienced with younger men.

John Travolta, who went on to play a male prostitute with older women as clients in American Gigolo, found true love before that on the sets of The Boy In The Plastic Bubble. He struck up with his co-star Diana Hyland who played his mother in the madefor-TV movie. He was 24. She was 40.

Then there's Elizabeth Taylor. Being married multiple times, occasionally to the same man, wasn't enough for Liz. She found wedded bliss, albeit briefly, with her seventh husband, Larry Fortensky.

There was a 20-year difference in their ages, which is possibly why the marriage didn't last. There's Barbara Hershey and Naveen Andrews, with over 20 years between them. Mary Tyler Moore (that's right, the one woman you thought was a virgin) and Robert Levine, 18 years apart. Cher and Rob Camilletti with their 17 years.

Elizabeth Taylor

Susan Sarandon, 12 years older than Tim Robbins. Mira Sorvino, 14 years older than husband Chris Backus. Linda Evans and the 12 years between Yanni and her. But then you'd had to have lost your hearing and eyesight to old age to put up with Yanni. And my favourite Cougar, Linda Hogan, Hulk's ex-wife. She married Charley Hill, a man who went to high school with her son. And in India, there was Saif Ali Khan, 12 years younger than Amrita Singh.

While some women may agree with Catrall that they choose younger men because the older ones are intimidated, there's also the feelgood factor. It does more to uplift a woman's ego to walk into a room with a man 20 years younger, than cosmetic surgery will ever do for her flesh. There is the look on the faces of other women. Jealousy. Pure, unmasked jealousy. And the brow furrowed in question, wondering why they too aren't lucky enough to have a guy with a head of hair and a flat stomach.

There's the look of envy on the faces of the men. Well, yes, all right, some of them are also wondering why they don't have a man with a head of hair and a flat stomach on their arm. But the rest are looking at the women in awe. Let's face it. If she can pull a guy that young and keep him there, she must be fantastic in bed. I mean, really.

Friends of mine, female and in their 40s, tell me that there is no dearth of young men who hit on them all the time. As one of them put it, most of these boys think they're going to get an easy lay. After all, if the woman is that old, she must be grateful that someone's paying attention to her. Please. Pathetically grateful. Unfortunately for such men, as far as the women are concerned, the only thing pathetic is their advances. And, no. The guys don't get laid. But the ones who do, tell me that the reason they prefer older women, is not just because of the sex, but everything else around it. Older women look after their men far better. There's food on the table when it's wanted, says one. With his last girlfriend, a woman he'd known in college, dinner meant a beer and a bag of chips.

And what about the sex? It works. The women know what they want, and aren't afraid to instruct their young lovers about the appropriate amorous advances. They're also more patient, both for themselves and with what they give in return. The same young man complaining earlier about the dining arrangements offered by his equally young girlfriend, also found fault with her technique in bed, saying she was always far too much in a rush. Either to reach her orgasm (understandable, I would have thought), or to help him reach his and get it over with (to be fair, equally understandable from her point of view). With someone more experienced, the love-making goes on for hours (okay, I find that to be an exaggeration) because of, something he's clearly never considered in his young life, foreplay.

Personally, I have never understood the need men have for young girlfriends. I tried talking to a 20 year old once. It lasted all of 20 minutes. I don't think I could survive an entire evening of that, no matter how good the sex. And I would think a woman with any sense would feel the same way about having to put up with the conversation of a kid. Maybe not. Maybe it is just about the sex. Me? I'd still do Demi Moore.

Demi Moore